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Commissioners Announce County Art Grant Recipients

The Lackawanna County Commissioners Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerry Notarianni and Laureen A. Cummings announced the 2017 arts & culture organizations and individuals who have received grant support for their various community projects, events and activities.

Financial assistance was awarded in two forms: program stream grants and community project grants.

The program stream grants are larger awards to arts and cultural non-profits who receive a yearly allocation from the Lackawanna County Arts and Culture Department. Their operations are reviewed every other year to gauge need, their projects and general growth.

Community project grants are one-time disbursements for a specific activity administered by an organization or individual. Applicants may reapply every October for this form of funding.

The applications for both revenue streams are reviewed and scored by a panel to help determine if the programs, projects or activities should be funded. Both grant programs are modeled after the process that The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts utilizes.

The financial resources for the grants come from the Arts, Education & Culture tax, which is assessed annually at a rate of approximately 1.0 mill.

The County’s Arts and Culture Department and the Pocono Arts Council has also recognized the Pennsylvania Arts Council’s “Partners in the Arts” Project Stream Award recipients from our region.

The amount awarded for 32 program grants this year was $214,200. The total for 22 project grants was $50,000.

Local anchor institutions, The Everhart Museum and The Scranton Cultural Center, received their annual education/arts & culture allocation of $240,000 each. The Lackawanna County Library System received $60,000 to operate the County Law Library, with $180,000 being held for emergency capital expenses/improvements.